Chapel

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CHAPEL

A miniature church, established originally as a place of prayer or oratorium, in royal or episcopal residences. With the extension of Christianity to the rural areas, the establishment of an oratory as a place of worship for a local population gave the chapel a public function. In some sections the martyrium or memoria, a shrine erected to house the relics of a saint or to honor the place of his martyrdom, became a center for religious services. In the 5th century the councils gave these private centers of worship an official character by bringing them under the jurisdiction of the local bishop. The chapel remained, however, the possession of the founder and his heirs. Clerics attached to a private church often became subject to the will of the owner rather than to the jurisdiction of the bishop, and the clergy of the king's chapel played a major role in the management of the realm.

The etymology of the word "chapel" is based upon the capella of St. martin of tours, which the Merovingian kings kept in the oratory of their palace. This precious relic was the legendary cape Martin divided with a beggar and later beheld in a vision as worn by Christ Himself. The capella was carried into battle as a pledge of victory and used as a surety for the verification of oaths. Confusion between the oratorium, where the oath was administered, and the capella, upon which it was sworn, caused the oratory of the palace to become known as the Capella s. Martini, the chapel of St. Martin. The priest in charge of the royal oratory came to be called the chaplain from his office as capellanus, guardian of the cape. Under charlemagne this office gained important status and was sometimes exercised by a bishop.

At the same time the famous church of aachen was built as the royal chapel, setting the model for a type of ecclesiastical institution whose office and influence far exceeded the meaning of its name. The great architectural developments of the medieval centuries found original and characteristic expression in chapels independently constructed or integrally attached to a cathedral or monastic church. Notable examples may be found in the abbey church of saint-denis and the Sainte-Chapelle of louis ix. In modern times the word is applied to a variety of ecclesiastical buildings, smaller than churches and attached to universities, colleges, and hospitals. The papal chapel (capella pontificia ), originally the site of liturgical service within the lateran or the Vatican (see sistine chapel), is today the assembly of the sacred college of cardinals and of other dignitaries, both clerical and lay, meeting with the pope in solemn liturgical ceremonies.

Bibliography: Sources. Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Capitularia (Berlin 1826–) v.2. hincmar, De ordine palatii, ch. 15 in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Capitularia (Berlin 1826–) 2.3:523. einhard, The Life of Charlemagne, tr. s. e. turner (Ann Arbor 1960). Vita Betharii, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum (Berlin 1826–) 3:615. suger, Abbott Suger on the Abbey Church of St. Denis and Its Art Treasures, ed. and tr. e. panofsky (Princeton 1946). Literature. h. leclercq, Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. f. cabrol, h. leclercq, and h. i. marrou, 15 v. (Paris 1907–53) 3.1:406–428; 10.2:2512–23. a. villien and h. leclercq, ibid. 3.1:390–399. w. henry, ibid. 1.1:1039–42. g. jacquemet et al., Catholicisme. Hier, aujourd'hui et demain, ed. g. jacquemet (Paris 1947–) 2:933–939. e. h. swift, Roman Sources of Christian Art (New York 1951). h. saalman, Medieval Architecture (New York 1962). o. von simson, The Gothic Cathedral (2d ed. New York 1962). f. l. cross, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (London 1957) 263.